This employee retention guide template has 10 pages and is a MS Word file type listed under our human resources documents.
Sample of our employee retention guide template:
A Brief Guide on Employee Retention A Condensed Guidebook to Help You Improve Employee Retention Table of Contents Employee Retention - An Overview 3 What is Employee Retention? 3 Why Do Employees Quit? 4 How Do You Create a Staff Retention Strategy? 5 1. Measure Your Company's Staff Turnover 5 2. Survey your Employees 6 3. Perform Exit and Stay Interviews 6 4. Create Staff Focus Groups 7 5. Execute a Retention Strategy 7 Top 5 Employee Retention Strategies 8 1. Employee Recognition 8 2. Competitive Compensation 8 3. Provide Opportunities for Professional Development and Learning 8 4. Constant Performance Feedback 9 5. Challenge Employees in a More Balanced Way 9 Final Thoughts 10 Employee Retention - An Overview Employees are arguably the most essential organizational assets. You cannot imagine an organization existing without employees. Usually, employees come and go after some time, due to various reasons. However, frequent employee departures reflect underlying organizational issues. Failure to address such issues can result in the loss of top-talent employees to your competitors. This can negatively affect your productivity and competitive power. That's why adopting several employee retention strategies is of great significance. Interested in managing employee retention? If yes, this comprehensive guide will help you master crucial employee retention concepts. Some issues addressed include reasons why employees quit, creating a retention strategy, and some top staff retention strategies. What is Employee Retention? Before understanding some crucial strategies used for employee retention, you need to understand what the term itself means. Employee retention is defined as the process of investing in employees' experience, aiming to keep them engaged while minimizing turnover. The cost associated with losing talented employees through recruiting, hiring, and training is high and reduces productivity. For instance, suppose your project manager with 25 years of experience leaves the job. In that case, assume you replace them with a fresh graduate. By the time the new recruit understands your organization and the industry at large, there is a high likelihood of errors having occurred. Besides, you'll incur significant costs associated with training your recruit to master crucial project management practices. This is because although they may have a better theoretical understanding of the industry, they lack exposure. Therefore, minimizing employee turnover is vital to achieving larger milestones. This is because experienced employees get things done quickly and efficiently, which reduces costly errors. Why Do Employees Quit? Employees leave their jobs because of many reasons. While some causes may be out of the company's control, others are within its control. The uncontrollable causes of staff turnover include: Retirement Taking care of a family member in need Having a child Employees may want to change their career Employees may wish to advance their education There are other organization-related reasons why employees quit to seek employment opportunities in alternative companies. These reasons may be driven by your company's value, leadership, culture, or work environment. All these elements are within the company's control and can result in overall job dissatisfaction. The following are some reasons why employees quit to go and seek employment in other companies: Burnout Uncompetitive compensation Poor leadership and management Poor treatment of employees Limited career growth opportunities Boredom Lack of recognition As previously stated, high employee turnover can have a significant impact on overall organizational performance. That said, there is a need to scrutinize and identify key areas that your organization should improve on to enhance job satisfaction and staff retention. How Do You Create a Staff Retention Strategy? As an organization leader, you need to develop a robust employee retention strategy to improve the overall employee experience. However, failure to understand the basics of developing new retention programs would be a total waste of effort, time, and money. This is because you would develop a strategy that doesn't address problematic issues facing your workforce. Therefore, before developing your employee retention strategy, you should conduct extensive quantitative and qualitative research. This way, you can discover the underlying problems present in your company. Here is how to conduct the research to help you build an efficient and effective company-tailored employee retention strategy. Measure Your Company's Staff Turnover You need to start by evaluating how many staff members leave or have left your organization within a specific timeframe. This way, you can determine ways to improve retention and how urgently you should incorporate a retention strategy. There are several types of employee turnover, including internal transfer, involuntary and voluntary turnover. When measuring turnover, concentrate on voluntary turnover. This is because these employees left the organization willingly. To compute voluntary turnover, divide the number of voluntary departures by the average number of staff members in the company and multiply by 100. This will give a percentage for the voluntary turnover rate. Ensure that the time frame is constant for both the denominator and the numerator. Voluntary Turnover = [ (# of voluntary departures) / (average # of employees) ] x 100 Consulting industry benchmarks can provide additional context to your voluntary turnover calculations. This way, you can determine whether your company's turnover rate aligns with or is below or above the current industry rate. Comparing your turnover trend with the benchmark data can help determine what's really causing your staff to quit. Survey your Employees
